Jachut

That's a sugar addiction or an addiction to the sugar fat combo in the case of Oreos. Carbs are an essential food group, your body needs them. But it only needs the right carbs - low GI wholegrains and the carbs in veges - and fruit in moderation too. You hear so many people say taht the only way to beat a carb/sugar addiction is cold turkey. Boy that would be hard. I have great admiration for you. I've a tendency to be like this too, I could easily eat a packet of Oreos in a sitting too - I could STILL do it now, with 2.9ml in my band. But I cant bear the thought of not eating any treats like that at all, I make a deal with myself. Since I know when I eat them I just dont eat them in moderation, I avoid them 99% of the time and when I do decide to indulge, I just really enjoy it, lol. I find it hard to imagine a junk food addiction - greasy high fat fried stuff, or savoury things like chips. I'll eat them, yeah, but only if its all that's available and only till I"m not hungry, but Cookies, cake, donuts, thank GOODNESS the band makes a lot of those cakey type foods near impossible to eat because I dont think I could have broken my addiction to them any other way.

I drink wine in moderation - perhaps a glass with dinner 4 nights of the week or so. Maybe 2 glasses if I go out. My DH and I also like to collect wine, belong to a club etc. Its like anything, dont overindulge but life's about enjoyment not punishing ourselves for being fat. There's lots worse hobbies to have!

Yes! You can blend almost anything down, whether or not it will be edible is anyone's guess, lol. Just adjust the texture as you progress, it can become thicker. Some ideas - because I ate sort of like what you've just listed for a few days becuase taht's what the lists said and I was passing out by day 4 and feeling simply awful. So I started eating what the family was eating, where suitable, just by mixing and blending. We had spaghetti bolognaise one night, well I took some of the bolognaise sauce and blended it with a can of crushed tomatoes to a soupy consistency. Surprisingly good. Another night we had lentil dahl, I blended that with greek yogurt. Roast dinner - lamb, roast pumpkin, peas and carrots - surprisingly good with gravy and liquid chicken stock blended to soup. I made a huge pot of vegie and lentil soup and blended it with extra chicken stock also, and by the end just blended it as it was to a thick smooth soup. It didnt affect my weight loss, I lost heaps, but I felt I remained well nourished and had begun a good schedule of breakfast, lunch and dinner with 2 smaller Snacks (maybe a yogurt or glass of V8) rather than just sipping odd liquids all over the place. No constipation, and no rebound weight gain when I started mushies. I was on mushies on Christmas day and had my christmas dinner mushed up in the blender with gravy, lol.

Yeah, that's a very unusual size! Way better than being a 600Z though I guess, lol. I find I'm now a 12E and that is difficult enough. Most of the 10's, 12's, never have any more than a C on the racks. Although it is easy enough to buy them online, I will only buy a bra that I have worn before and know suits me. I find I have a lot of underarm flubber, breast tails I think they call them, and I need a wide backstrap regardless of being narrow backed - and that E breasts are not out of proportion to my height. A lot of smaller bras have a very thin strap and then I get this unsightly bulge under the arm although I dont have back fat anymore. Fayreform are jsut the BEST bras for me, they fit me perfectly. A good bra makes that much difference and you can so easily buy swimsuits for bigger busts too that I just dont know that I could be bothered having a breast lift to remedy the sagginess. Its really only DH that wants me to do that and i just really cant see why you'd bother. Where do you go braless ever really? He just doesnt seem to understand that if I were to have a lift, clothed I would look absolutely no different than I do now anyway. And that often you dont get as great or long lasting a result lifting larger breasts anway. I'd rather spend that money on my thighs, lol.

I have never been advised to go on liquids or mushies after a fill, just to go carefully. Which we would all do by instinct anyway, you dont ahve a fill and then rush out and eat a donut! But yeah, I've always resumed solids immediately, often having lunch an hour or so later. Very carefully! I've never ever had a problem.

I was under the impression that a huge fill all at once placed you at way more risk of complications than did sneaking up bit by bit. And really, as much as we all might like the idea of being tight and dropping tons of weight, it doesnt work that way. You're better off losing slowly and steadily and in the long run, nobody wants more fill than they need. The more you can eat and still be losing, the better nourished you will be and also the less risk of complications you have. I also dont think I could have handled my current fill level way back when my eyes were still bigger than my stomach. I can work with it now becuase I"m used to not eating so much, I have better habits, I know what does and doesnt work with my band and eating very slowly is second nature. If I'd had this much fill early on I would have been PBing left right and centre.

Amount wise, texture wise fine. But all I see is packaged processed foods. Could you cook some soup yourself and put meat and vegetables in it and blend it very smooht? And make a smoothie with skim milk and some real fruit in it? So much better for you than pudding, which offers no real nutritional benefits. You'll be feeling lethargic and constipated on such a processed diet.

Rich food can easily upset my stomach too, I dont know why since I'm well out from the early stages and eat normally, but I guess I just dont have the tolerance for it that I once did. I reckon peppermint tea is a saviour for an upset tummy, it works for me every single time.

I knew I wanted to run becuase I had the same dreams of that effortless motion and the huge high, I even had memories of doing it until I was about 24 or 25. I hate walking for exercise, I'm a bit of an adrenaline junkie. so whilst I will happily walk with my DH for a chat and cover 5 or 6km I dont consider that my day's exercise. It has to involve sweat, pain and tears, lol. I first tried running about 2 months after banding when I was down about 14kg, I probably had a BMI of about 30 at that point. I'd had a bad ankle which made even walking impossible, but had a cortisone shot in it just before banding and it had ceased to give me so much trouble. Before that I'd been working quite hard on an elliptical trainer with only about 2 weeks off to recover from surgery. I planned on doing Cool Runnings Couch to 5K so started out cautiously but when it came time to drop back to a walk I felt like I could keep jogging so I did. I ran 3kms that night and I never looked back, I started doing it 3 x a week (worried aobut pounding my ankle on concrete, so kept it to that number) and then bought a treadmill and started running every day. After a few months, I did my first 4km fun run, loved that, trained for a five, so took up more outside running again and did the 5. Then we went away to gorgeous Byron Bay and ran a 6km course every single day up there, and then got home and trained for a 10km event in december. Since then, I run 10km or more once a week, do a couple of 8km runs and a few hour long weights circuits.

Oh - and burning muscle, attacking muscle, breaking down muscle, whatever they like to call it, isnt a bad thing. Its repair to the damage caused by exercise to your muscles that causes your muscles to grow bigger and stronger. If you dont damage your muscles, they wont get stronger, simple.

This fat burning heart rate thing is just such a myth. I mean, there's truth to it - you burn the biggest percentage of fat for energy within your fat burning range - about 60 to 70% of your maximum heart rate. But there's several problems with it. You can walk and keep your heart rate that high, I can run and keep my heart rate that low. Who burns more calories- I do! Becuase I can run 3 times as far as you can walk in that time. Why can I do that? Because in the early days I spent a lot of my workout time working at a much harder intensity, at a much higher heart rate and I got much much fitter. Now, not only does my heart rate stay lower for much more intense work, but my maximum heart rate has moved higher too - so my fat burning zone is no longer, say 120 to 140 bpm, but is more like 140 - 170bpm. Those standard forumulae of 220 - age are very inaccurate. Secondly, if you work out for half an hour and your heart rate is well above your fat burning zone, you may indeed burn less of a proportion of fat as fuel in your workout. But you will burn many more calories in total and much more fat in total, AND your metabolism will stay elevated for hours after your workout. Your body will adapt much faster, build more muscle and prepare itself to be strong enough to do that sort of activity. Eventually you will have the ability to go out and run for an hour and burn 800 or 1000 calories in a session rather than walk for that time and burn 400 and THAT gives you one hell of a time efficient and ferocious fat fighting tool. That's what weight maintenance is all about, you'll not get fat again if you can do that sort of thing. And believe me, I can do that now, and it doesnt tire me ridiculously, make me lethargic and inactive all day, it feels exactly as it used to when I just went out for a half hour's walk. I recover almost immediately. Now of course, you cant start off running an hour when you're obese, maybe unwell and not fit. But its very very beneficial to add intervals of more intense activity into your workouts, and to plan to get much fitter, not just coast at fat burning level. As you get less and less heavy you will be able to do more and more work and pushing those boundaries pays big rewards. If all you ever did was walk in your fat burning heart rate you will lose weight and keep yourself out of the cardiac ward and for many people who just dont like to exercise, that's good enough, and it shouldnt be belittled or looked down upon. But a bit of extra effort will turn you into a very fit person who burns calories and a much higher rate.

I think I would EAT my eyeball after I dug it out!

:cry me too. Somehow, no matter how realistic you are, you think you're going to be perfect at the end of this dont you? My poor train wreck of a body. I dont have an apron or batwings, but boy, I look every one of my 40 years. There's no bikinis in my future. My boobs, they're like footy socks with tennis balls in the end. I defintiely AM going to do something about it though. I just have to wait till I"m working to pay for it. But a look around you and most people are far from perfect. I look great dressed and barely anyone sees me naked, so I dont let it get me down. A good bra is my best (or is that breast?) friend!

Other - Melbourne, Australia. But wont this be totally skewed because this is primarily an American board? The results wont mean a lot surely.

Boy, sounds like he has issues! I think you need to remember you are doing this for yourself. Nobody can force you to eat something unless you let them. But its sure difficult when perhaps you feel your relationship or the status quo is in jeaopardy - I agree it sounds like this is about more than just food. You need to find a way to stand up for yourself, and he needs to deal with the fact that he cant control what you do. I wish I could help mre than that, but really, that's a matter for you and how you wish to approach your relationship.

Well I probably wouldnt mention it if I had a slight sniffle or something. But it could be very dangerous not to mention medication you'd been taking. They need to know - many surgeons even like you to stop taking the pill and various vitamins before surgery, to not mention any antibiotics you were on is just too big a risk. It could interfere with other drugs you need to be given for example.

15 August 1967 - yep, Im turning 40 in 10 days time. :cry

Even whilst my mind was reeling at the thought of 17 children, my first though was still "are people ACTUALLY called Jim Bob for real?". Lol, I thought names like that were only in movies and satires. Um, not my choice. But good luck to them. I'm afraid I'm too materialistic. I would worry that I coudlnt provide well enough for that many, I value private educations and buying my kids a car and helping them out in that way so that they can get a good start in adulthood. Which probably jsut means taht I have not helped my kids that much, simply raised young people who expect a lot of material things in the world. There's a balance to be had I think and whislt I think that some of the advantages I can offer 3 children are superior to what a family of 17 could offer, there's probably also a lot of things we could all learn from them. You'd need to be cooperative and resourceful to live in a family of that many people. Still, if you gave me the choice of another child or a leather modular sofa, I'd take the sofa at this point in my life. It doesnt talk back, make mess or cost you any money after the initial purchase.

Shesha, no I wasnt banded when pregnant. My records say mild PET, but I suspect I had borderline blood pressure that gave the obsetrician the excuse to schedule an induction to fit in with his schedule. The legacy of being white, middle class with private health insurance in Australia - far far higher likelihood of medical intervention in birth! I never swelled unduly, no more than was reasonable for a pregnant woman. I wore my wedding rings, etc the whole way through. No Protein in the urine either. I think my blood pressure was 140/95 the day I went in for a check up and was promptly scheduled for an induction the next day. So yeah, although my records say preeclampsia for my first two pregnancies, I'd maybe doubt that now. Ironically no such trouble in the my third pregnancy but I ended up having a caesar due to her being breech. All well before banding though.

I have a few drinks a week too, I only ever drink wine, but I have had a beer once or twice since banding. Yes, alcohol is empty calories, but life is about more than staying on a strict diet 24/7 for the rest of your life. If you're not having more than a few and not having them too often, there's not a problem in the world with relaxing the rules every now and again.

That's because they're from the shoulders up, roflmao!! I really do mean to do before and afters. I have to scan in the befores, none on digital, and I have to get a new camera before I can do the afters - ours is full of Byron Bay sand from last September. We're going again in 6 weeks, I should do something about it. I think I've only ever put one photo of myself on here.

Yay. This is just what we need. I'm down inside my healthy weight range but would ideally love to lose 14lb more. My bum is still too big, lol.

Hehe, you'll be a complete tart in no time Susannah :biggrin1:

My doc mentioned calories only in telling me to make sure I got enough, that huge Water and muscle tissue weight loss was not really that beneficial and it was better to nourish myself to heal and have slower loss that was real fat loss. Nor did I do a preop liquid diet at a BMI of 35 becuase he said that it's just not beneficial if you dont need to shrink your liver. In short - you will have fast weight loss consisting of a lot of water anyway, but try to minimise it and give your body what it needs. 1000 calories a day will be hard to reach anyway.

I'm sorry you're finding it tough. I think everyone ought to be prepared to face these issues, whether briefly, rarely or daily when going in. But I can honestly say not one of your statements represents my experience in any way. Its been nothing but positive. I eat less, but I eat everything, I've lost all my weight and I'm healthier than ever. Best decision of my life. I wouldnt want to give anyone the impression that its easy, but if we enter into it with caution, why shouldnt we also enter into it with optimism?